Q-and-A with Rep. Doug McKillip

In just a few hours, ReNew Athens will be holding an open house at the office of Rep. Doug McKillip. The program, which will be based on the Habitat For Humanity model, will acquire and renovate existing apartments and transform them into affordable housing units for purchase by low-income families and individuals. McKillip sat down with me for a brief interview about ReNew Athens ...

You're working with Spencer Frye from Habitat For Humanity on this project. How did this idea get started?

I think in fairness the name, Renew Athens, was Spencer’s. I think he already had it as he was going through some element of the incorporation process for Habitat. In fact had already gone pretty far down the road in the 501(c)3 process when we were literally standing around at an event, and he was describing what kind of vision he had for the future of Habitat and where it could go. He was trying to create some additional financial flexibility with the new incorporation, and I said ‘yeah, you sound like the kind of guy I need to talk to because I’m trying to figure out a way to create a different type of affordable housing product, particularly with some apartments and condos we have in town, why not figure out a way to convert those.' Well, he’d say something, and I’d say ‘what about this’ and he’d say ‘what about this’ and it was one of those lightning strike moments where you look at each other and you get goosebumps and think 'wow, this is a good idea.'

The neat part of it is that it’s not particularly creative, and it’s not really our idea. It’s No. 11 on the OneAthens's strategies to increase affordable housing, so it’s less about coming up with something and more about finding a way to implement it and put it on the ground.

You rolled in a sustainability element into it as well.

With my background in politics, and what I see as a bigger policy idea for the state, I asked 'where are the benefits of this?' I started ticking them off in my head, and it's that you get no additional impervious surface, no more rooftops, no more silt in the river, no sediment control issues from new construction. When you rehabilitate these units, let’s do it with better insulation and higher efficiency mechanical systems. Let's make sure every unit has its own meter to promote conservation because that’s one of the biggest drains right there from folks not paying their own bill.

What we’re really doing here is that you recycle bottles and cans on the curbside, and we’re recycling houses. What bigger in your everday life do you use than your house?

Every study I’ve seen says we have a glut of housing on the market, so this builds on that idea.

Right, and that’s the legacy of the developers working with our university students. Students are living in different apartment complexes now then they did back when I was in school or when you were in school. Through the natural progression of things, some of those areas have become places we need to pay more attention to.

With Spencer having the institutional experience of heading up Habitat For Humanity, why create a new non-profit organization? Why not have this merely be a program offered by Habitat?

Publically we’re keeping it as a separate entity – it will have a different board – but it is a feeder organization for Habitat for Humanity. It's a close cousin. They’re going to be highly related with many board members in common. And there are other Habitats around the country that do this very thing. It's something that is approved by Habitat International.

What is your vision regarding working with and collaborating with other non-profits then?

We want tie-ins from all the community stakeholders who offer services to low-income citizens. Every person who has contacted me about this, I’ve told them 'please email me your thoughts and ideas.' We’ve got some fabulous feedback from folks as far away as California about some of the models out there. We’re trying to soak up as much information as we can right now. We’ve been in touch with the Athens Land Trust and Action, Inc. and the Athens Housing Authority and a host of others, so we want to work with everyone on this.

Given your profile as a state legislator and the fact that you own various housing units, there have been some concerns regarding conflicts of interest. How are you going to address those?

At this point, my understanding of the limitation is that I may not obtain any sort of financial interest or benefit of any HOME-assisted activity. So none of my units, nor any units I’m invested in, nor any units any of my business partners, can be considered, period. So the first criteria really is ‘Doug doesn’t own it’ and after that we’ll look at your units. It’s not a problem because I know what I own, so I’ll just make sure that none of my units are submitted. The only conflict is where the money is going, and it won’t be going to anything I have a financial stake in.

Has there been any discussion of additional service provision aside from the housing component?

First of all, we’re going to follow the Habitat model, so there’s going to have to be a big buy-in on the part of anybody who wants to own one of these condos. There will have to be sweat equity in whatever number of hundreds of hours that will contribute to ReNew Athens. There’s going to be homeowner education, teaching folks how to fix simple home improvement needs. There’s absolutely going to be some educational componenet involved in this.